Emerald City Comic Con 2011: Day One

Day One of Emerald City Comic Con 2011 got off to an early start. We left Portland around 7:30am (after final packing and gassing up the car) and arrived in Seattle around 10:30am. We checked into Sixth Avenue Inn to see if they had a room ready for us, and shockingly it was already prepped.

All the amenities that are important to con-going on a budget were available – free wifi, microwave, and mini-fridge. The only big issues we had were the “flankets” (fake-blankets) and the small ass shower. I had to turn sideways in order to wash my hair or my elbows would have popped out the curtain.

BSG EXHIBIT

Anywho – we unloaded the car, oriented ourselves and then made the long trek up to the Science Fiction Museum. We took a detour and had a delicious pre-BSG Exhibit Thai lunch at Golden Singha. Highly suggest it if you are in that area.

Total photo-bomb ticket scalper in the background.

Finally entered the museum doors and wandered up to the third floor where the exhibit is housed. Upon entering you are greeted by a Cylon frakkin’ Raider complete with rolling red eye. Somewhere there exists a video of me geeking out when I realized that it was…sentient. Well, mock sentient.

Every 10 minutes or so - the magic happens!

Other exciting mysteries include Starbuck’s pilot suit, her for reals dog tags, the infamous Number Six red dress and a gorgeous outfit worn by President Roslin in the opera house scene. The Mark II and Mark IV Vipers were pretty wicked as well…though I would have LOVED to touch and climb into one of them. It wouldn’t hurt for them to make up a fake one that fans could enter and snap a photograph. I would pay EXTRA for that privilege.

I don’t wanna post all the pics here because if you really, really love BSG, you should go and check it out yourself. The exhibit is running through March 4th, 2012. In fact, one of the staff mentioned plans to bring back some cast and crew in the next year to do script readings or signings. I signed up for their mailing list so expect updates.

As we were exiting the exhibit, we met Leyla from Missouri who was super excited to find another female fan. We chatted for quite awhile about Caprica and Blood and Chrome. She definitely inspired me to finish off Caprica and get pumped for Blood and Chrome by referencing how Caprica explains the resurrection ships and ties into the rest of the series. I exchanged info with her and we’re now FB friends – she even picked up a business card from Sarah Hulin for the Starbuck Mandala earrings. You can check out Sarahhoo’s Etsy shop here.

We wandered over to the Museum store and picked up a handsome collection of propaganda posters. We haven’t framed any of them yet, but here’s a sample of them from the store display:

That was just about the end of the BSG exploits, so we trekked back to the hotel and prepped for the con.

EMERALD CITY COMIC CON

We entered the doors, grabbed our badges and toured the floor. It was much more crowded than I remember from 2009 and I was happy to note that the media guests were in a separate section of the convention hall to keep the flow of the show-floor open. We hit up a few booths pretty immediately – Jason Palmer Studios which was a carry-over from SDCC, where Dan purchased this Jayne shirt. They were sporting some gorgeous BSG prints and a new Sereni-Tee design…but we were being cautious about too much spending the first night.

TONY HARRIS

We swung by the Tony Harris signing table to see how much he was charging for commissions, around $300, so we couldn’t buy a piece of artwork, but we chatted a bit and learned some exciting details about Ex Machina. Apparently the movie rights were sold in 2005 but they expired during the Writer’s Strike and they reverted back to Brian K. Vaughn and Harris who now own the property outright and are looking to shop it around. Hopefully as a TV series – which would play better to the stories strengths. It wouldn’t be as expensive as Rome or Deadwood either. Come on HBO!

He also mentioned that Vaughn has already written an Ex Machina screenplay and shopped that around prior to completing the series. It’s not a condensed version of the series – more like a similar story which takes place in an alternate universe using those same characters. They are using that script to shop the property around Hollywood and TV Land.

We picked up some artwork from John Tyler Christopher – who had inked an awesome Mucha inspired Iron Man which originally caught my eye but what sold me was the excellent negative space prints of Spiderwoman and Ms. Marvel. I’d also seen someone carrying around an Emma Frost (despite her being my least favorite character OF ALL TIME) which had originated at his booth. We ended up talking about our mutual hate of the White Queen and how the character of Cyclops has been perverted badly over the years. We walked away from the table with two prints for $10 and they’re already framed and ready to be hung next to our Marvel poster.

Negative Space Comic Book Art Makes Us Happy

Purchased some buttons from Buttersafe, a quietly amusing web comic a friend turned me on to. The buttons are freaking adorable.

LGBT PANEL

Next was the LGBT panel – which hosted primarily Prism comics artists and writers, along with Erika Moen, a PDX artist from Periscope Studio. The panel seemed to largely think that the inclusion of gays and lesbians in comics is such a regular occurrence that it’s almost a non-issue, primarily because a gay character now exists in Archie Comics. This is not something I necessarily agree with – it kinda felt like saying “because Obama is in the White House racism is over.” And once that idea had been repeated without contention in the panel, no one seemed interested in countering it. There was some discussion about the appropriate comics for teens who are struggling with sexual identity and how big the market is for specifically gay and lesbian content in comics.

BUFFY THE MUSICAL

Grrr, Aargh

Then it was Buffy The Musical – or so we thought. We entered the Hall at the right time, but the Boondock Saints panel was running over. Sean Patrick Flannery was telling lots of animated stories and being a total D-Bag, cursing like a sailor. He managed to insult Asians and Gay men within the space of five minutes. Norman Reedus seemed…calm in comparison. Immediately liked him much better and considered getting a signature or picture.

After Flannery insulted and frustrated half the room, they said the prayer and exited the stage. We only got through half the “Once More With Feeling” episode before Smalls rang. She came into town on the train and we needed to meet her in the lobby of the hotel.

The Buffy episode was fun but folks weren’t as into it as I thought they’d be – except for the parts where people got to talk some shit to Dawn. Apparently, the con-goers had a lot of angst they needed to exercise on Buffy’s young sister. I will admit to having some intense Dawn dislike…she’s the Scrappy Doo of the Scooby bunch and fields a lot of flack for it. The props, subtitles and cues were extraordinarily helpful and fun though. We probably would have enjoyed it with more rest and a livelier crowd.

Regardless, I was pleased when Smalls phoned because I felt pretty exhausted after the long day and was just looking forward to a delicious pint of Apricot Ale and hitting the bed to prepare for an equally long day on Saturday.

About tinyheroes

Mindy Crouchley is a 33 year old woman with a degree in English and Technical Writing from Portland State University. She has accumulated three+ years experience in the Marketing and Communications field - with an emphasis on creating digital media content.
She has been reading comic books since she was 10 years old. She currently lives in outer southeast Portland with her spouse Dan Robertson, her baby girl, and their dog - Jabba the pug.
She spends her free time devouring books, crafting cosplay, video gaming, attending comic cons, writing stories/screenplays, attending book to film adaptation club meetings, volunteering, and watching copious amounts of TV and movies.